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Did you know you can check out what some indie devs are doing by going to #ScreenshotSaturday on Twitter and G+?
I'm going to try to institute #FootageFriday, but don't know how long I'll keep it up. So much work! Though the Wolfire guys manage, somehow.
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Because May is over!
Last day to get cheap sixty second shooter energy ($2 for $1!) ($5 for $2!) ($10 for $5!)
Me, I'm going to peruse the listings one last time make sure I didn't miss anything. Just picked up Osmos for my iPhone, that's a good one.
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Less than two weeks after I posted my Game Dev Dad article, Daniel Marcoux posted this on Gamasutra.
And then started an indie game dev dad group on Facebook.
There's also an IGDA game-developer-parent group.
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So, 38 Studios, led by baseball champion Curt Schilling, has laid everyone off.
So, on one hand, this is kind of a reminder - when you're operating in the low budget end of the spectrum, you think to yourself, "If only I had more money - then I could make a bigger, better game that would attract more customers." But truth is, at any scale, the amount you spend on the game is usually more than the amount you bring in. The Call of Duties and Angry Birds are exceptions - massive outliers. Most of us are making Kingdom of Amalurs and sixty second shooters and losing money.
But it's a costly reminder. This sucks. Above and beyond, for me, for a couple of reasons:
First, I met Curt Schilling a few years ago at the IGDA Leadership Forum and he was a really nice, humble guy. He said something to the effect of, "I realize I'm not the game designer I once thought I could be." And I was speechless for a moment. That sentiment is so rare. Not just in the game industry but in the world - most people admit they can't code or can't make art, but everybody thinks they can design. Curt Schilling sounded to me like he could be a Level Five leader - he was aware of his limitations and wouldn't let his own ego ruin the game he was making. I was really impressed.
Second, 38 Studios talked a lot about how they were going to emphasize quality of life, avoiding crunching and death-marching. If they had succeeded, that would be evidence that the 'happy worker' method of game development could really work. Sure, there's some evidence out there already - PopCap and Infinity Ward both had reputations for 'no mandatory overtime' and were massively succesful - but this is more evidence on the side of people who believe 'you have to death-march to make it in this business.'
So. That's what I think. What do you think?
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sixty second shooter is in #BecauseWeMay - you can buy $5 worth of Energy - the 'in-game' currency - for $2.
As long-running sixty second shooter champion Joseph7099 pointed out, energy really helps get you up on the leaderboards - and although you can earn hundreds of points of free energy each day or by playing, it adds up slowly. Right now, a mere $2 gets you 80,000 energy - enough to play hundreds of games with a full load out. Combine that with the free energy you earn and you might never need to buy energy again.
Me, I'm picking up some games I've been dragging my feet about, like Scoregasm and Jamestown.
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Announcing Energy Hook!
It is ... the Future!
The invention of graviton-based energy hooks - intended primarily for construction and heavy lifting - has changed the face of extreme sports and parkour. The extreme athletes of the future play Energy Hook - with their (often home-made) energy hook gauntlets, they swing from rooftop to rooftop and perform death-defying (and sometimes not so defying) stunts in midair. You are one of those athletes!
So, yeah, it's official. It has a name. And that name is Energy Hook.
That, by the way, is a weird thing about Kickstarter. If you're using it to mostly measure interest - if you haven't actually built much of your product yet - you still need a name. Strange to come up with a name first and the product later. We didn't have a name for Die By The Sword until a year or so into it ...
In other news the 'Pimp Happion Labs' giveaway ends tomorrow, and there haven't been a lot of entries, (I guess videogame development fans aren't like Etsy fans...go figure) so unless people suddenly go crazy in the 12th hour you can basically get a full ride on sixty second shooter for free. All the in-game currency you could ever spend. See the post at the top of the page.
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Ta da.
Welcome to my new company, Happion Laboratories. It's atomic!
And yeah, basically right now it's just a URL and a dream. Guy Kawasaki wrote once that when you're creating a new company, the first thing you should do is make business cards. But he wrote that years ago. I think in this day and age, he'd probably say the first thing you should do is create a website.
I almost created a brand new website but then I thought - Wait a minute. I've already got a website with a page rank of 5 that gets hundreds of hits a day. Why would I want to start over?
So - GameDevBlog is now the official Game Development Weblog of Happion Laboratories. Thoughts and opinions voiced here are the thoughts and opinions of Happion Labs.
I'm borrowing a trick from my wife's Etsy friends. You can win a Rhodium badge for sixty second shooter (and the 500,000 points of energy that go along with that.) I'll be giving away ten badges to randomly selected entrants. Each of the things you do on this list earn you an entry into the contest:
Deadline to enter is 11:59 PM PST May 23rd - the giveaway ends right before the #BecauseWeMay promotion starts.
[Random side note:
I'm not going to make a G+ fan page, but you can always add me (Jamie Fristrom) to your circles on G+. (Not part of the contest.)]
Expect happy things. The future begins tomorrow.
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A summary of the past year or so:
At Torpex, we were chasing a project and funding for a pretty cool game of Richard Garfield's that ended up not happening in the end. After being led on by a publisher for months they changed their minds, claimed that they thought our proposed budget was for a different number of skus and no longer wanted to pursue it.
So we put Torpex on mothballs and I started looking for a working-for-the-man type job, but then put the jobhunt on hold for two reasons:
* Chrome Native Client! New technology sometimes brings new opportunities. It did with Schizoid and XNA. I wanted to jump on that in case it became something big.
* My youngest daughter isn't even in preschool yet, so it would be nice for me to spend more time with her during her 'formative years' - not to mention my wife could use all the help around the house she could get.
So I became a "Game Dev Dad" again. In the early days of Torpex I was in a similar situation - working from home, spending a lot of time with my other daughter (who wasn't in preschool at that time).
This time there wre some differences though. Back then I was under the illusion that what I was doing was almost guaranteed to pay for itself in the long run, once we started selling Schizoid on Xbox Live Arcade. So I kept the door to my office closed and my daughter (mostly) understood she wasn't to bother dad while he was working. Schizoid did great by indie game standards, but below average by Xbox Live Arcade standards of the time, and that meant it didn't make enough money to pay the team much.
This time, I didn't have illusions. sixty second shooter was probably going to not pay for the time I put into it. It would be fun to make, but it would be a worse investment than a lottery ticket.
So - going into this knowing that it probably wouldn't help support the family - I knew it wasn't fair to lock myself in my office while Cathy did all the stay-at-home-parenting. This time it had to be more of a fifty-fifty split. Now I'm just as much 'stay-at-home-dad' as 'game developer'.
On the one hand, I realize I'm very lucky to be able to do this. Most guys have to work just to pay the bills and don't get to spend as much time with their kids as they would like. How incredibly fortunate for me that I made enough money with Treyarch and Spider-Man that I can do this (for a little while longer, anyway.)
On the other hand - it does chafe. You've heard adages like "nobody wishes on their death beds that they spent more time at the office" or "nobody wishes on their death beds that they spent less time playing frisbee with the kids". I could very well find myself wishing on my death bed that I made more games. And I realize I'm doing a Good Thing when I play *The Ladybug Game* again with my youngest daughter but it's almost agonizing. It's sacrificing "Type 1" happiness (pleasure in the moment) for "Type 3" happiness (the satisfaction of doing the right thing.) The "Type 2" happiness comes and goes. [For more talk about these types of happiness, check out 'Happines: The Science Behind Your Smile' by Daniel Nettle - a book I really liked.]
On the gripping hand - I have to choose my family over making games. Just have to.
But now that I'm developing less and parenting more, I seem to be finding that I'm even less than half as productive than I used to be. The interruptions come more frequently; the flow states last for less time. The overhead of checking e-mail and generally getting down to business is the same size, so the time spent actually making games is cut away. (That's why, a while ago, I asked: "How do stay-at-home dad's get any coding done?")
And our youngest would still feel ignored and get upset and throw tantrums in the middle of the day. Now - how can that be? She's got two parents at home now, how could she possibly be lacking in attention?
Turns out that both my wife and I were multi-tasking. I was trying to make games and be a dad at the same time; she was trying to run her Etsy shop and be a mom at the same time. We'd leave our two year old daughter to her own devices and try to get stuff done on our computers - and she'd go back and forth between us, trying to grab our attention. Nobody wins.
(And there are plenty of studies that show how bad multitasking is. Studies have shown that it gives you the illusion of being awesome when in actuality it destroys your productivity - and Joel Spolsky has pointed out that when you're task switching, even if you do it perfectly efficiently, it means your deliverables come in late. Others call it being 'randomized'.)
I've said before that being productive is like dieting.
So our solution is to automate. We've been trying it this week - we have shifts - we officially set aside time to work and time to pay attention to our daughter. One does the 'parenting' while the other does the 'working'. And we're still fifty-fifty.
And so far it's been working great! We're No Angels is almost at the point where I won't be embarrassed to show it to people (too bad Comics vs Games and the Indiecade submission date already came and went) and I've gotten some business stuff set up for my upcoming kickstart efforts. Announcement coming real soon!
So - for those of you in the same situation as me - trying to do some involved creative or technical work from home and balancing that with family - I highly recommend: 'eschew multitasking! Have official hours of the day where you do specific kinds of tasks!'
That said, I have to admit I'm a bit leery about posting this - I'm worried that it's TMI or that people won't take me seriously as a game developer when they hear I pay more attention to my wife and kids than to my games.
And I worry if it'll hurt my upcoming kickstarter - will people ask: "Hey, are you going to make this game or are you going to only work on it part-time while mostly you're a dad?" The answer is: depends on how much money we raise, honestly. If we raise the minimum, we'll be working on it part-time. If we raise more, then I'll be able to say to my wife, "Hey, we're really paying the bills with this thing! I think it has to take priority over your Etsy shop - can you spend more time being a dedicated mom so I can work on the game full-time?" (Likewise with our artist whom I'll name later - if we raise the minimum I'll only be able to afford to pay him part-time; if we raise more he can quit his day job.)
So, yeah, worried. But there it is, cards on the table. Probably more about me than you ever wanted to know.
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